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Bank Of England will hold interest rates at 0.5%

May 12 2018

The Royal Institution for Chartered Surveyors said that April saw a slight decline in average prices across the United Kingdom, but but quite big falls in values in London - particularly among homes in the £500k to £1million bracket.

Since then, however, there has been growing optimism that there could still be a United Kingdom interest rate hike in 2018.

With global supply looking set to diminish further as a result of the USA re-imposing sanctions on Iran the mood towards the commodity-correlated Canadian Dollar remains generally positive.

Unless Draghi offers fresh commentary on the monetary policy outlook investors are not expected to find any additional reason to sell out of the Euro (EUR) ahead of the weekend.

United Kingdom employment rate stats will be out on Tuesday, alongside average earnings data and a measure of changes to jobless claim counts.

It increased by only 0.1 per cent in April against forecasts it would tick up by 0.2 per cent. "Taking external and domestic influences together, CPI inflation is projected to fall back slightly more quickly than in February, reaching the target in two years".

Furthermore, the current economic status locally is bringing analysts to the conclusion of a further interest rate hike. That reflects the soft growth seen at the start of the year.

Richard Barwell, head of macro research at BNP Paribas Asset Management UK Ltd., said he doubts Carney's contention that he's speaking mainly to the wider public. With the split scheduled for March 2019, the BOE said managing the implications of Brexit remains the main challenge for rate setters.

"The only people who throw that term at me are in this room", Carney told the news conference.

The counter-argument goes that the governor's aim isn't to make promises but to provide insight into how policy makers interpret statistics.

Confirming a glum first quarter for the economy, industrial output barely rose in March, data showed.

"Given the recent weakness in consumer credit and the housing market, there was somewhat greater-than-usual uncertainty about the near-term momentum in consumer spending and the extent to which households would adjust their spending and saving to the past fall in their real incomes", the minutes said.

So yet again we have to digest another change of tack from Bank of England policymakers which speaks to a wider problem that the Bank of England has, in that its policy of forward guidance has been abysmal over the last few years, and seems to change on a quarterly basis.

Let's wait and see, it is saying.

"There was zero in the data to sustain it at the time and the danger was the data would worsen, as it did", he said.

Despite this, Charlotte points out that more than 50% of the easy access market still only pays a rate that is less than 0.50%.